The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association, starting in the late 19th century, as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by linguists, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.
The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of lexical (and, to a limited extent, prosodic) sounds in spoken (oral) language: phones, intonation and the separation of syllables. To represent additional qualities of speechsuch as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palatean extended set of symbols may be used.
Segments are transcribed by one or more IPA symbols of two basic types: letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter may be transcribed in IPA with a single letter: , or with a letter plus diacritics: , depending on how precise one wishes to be. Similarly, the French letter may be transcribed as either or : and are two different, though similar, sounds. Slashes are used to signal phonemic transcription; therefore, is more abstract than either or and might refer to either, depending on the context and language.
Occasionally, letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. Since the most recent addition in 2005, the IPA alphabet consists of 107 segmental letters, and is augmented with tone letters, diacritics, transcription-delimiters and the like. Most basic IPA symbols, along with a sample of compound symbols, are illustrated on a summary chart.
History
In 1886, a group of French and English language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would be known from 1897 onwards as the International Phonetic Association (in French, ). The idea of the alphabet had been suggested to Passy by Otto Jespersen. It was developed by Passy along with other members of the association, principally Daniel Jones. The original IPA alphabet was based on the Romic alphabet, an English spelling reform created by Henry Sweet that, in turn, was based on the Palaeotype alphabet of Alexander John Ellis, itself derived from Lepsius Standard Alphabet first used for transcribing Ancient Egyptian into German.
The original intent was to make it usable for other languages; the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language. For example, the sound (the sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter for English but with for French and German; with German, was used for the sound of Bach. With a growing number of transcribed languages this proved impractical, and in 1888 the values of the letters were made uniform across languages. This would provide the base for all future revisions.
Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After relatively frequent revisions and expansions from the 1890s to the 1940s, the IPA remained nearly static until the Kiel Convention in 1989, which substantially revamped the alphabet. A smaller revision took place in 1993 with the resurrection of letters for mid central vowels and the retirement of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap. Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely of renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces.
Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology (extIPA) were created in 1990 and were officially adopted by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association in 1994. They were substantially revised in 2015 with lesser changes in 2025.
Description
The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound (phoneme). This means that: It does not use combinations of letters to represent single sounds, the way English does with and , nor single letters to represent multiple sounds, the way represents or in English. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, the way English and have a "hard" and "soft" pronunciation. The IPA does not generally have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as "selectiveness". However, if a large number of phonemically distinct letters can be derived with a single diacritic, that may be used instead.
The IPA used to have more symbols for language-specific sounds, although they have mostly been retired, once used for the "compound" tone of Swedish and Norwegian, and , once used for the moraic nasal of Japanesethough one remains: , used for the sj-sound of Swedish. When the IPA is used for broad phonetic or for phonemic transcription, the letter–sound correspondence can be rather loose. The IPA has recommended that more 'familiar' letters be used when it would not cause ambiguity, such as for English , and for and , for or , for , etc. Similarly, and are recommended for when it is preferable to transcribe affricates such as and or and as single letters.
Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics are used to modify these, and 17 additional signs indicate suprasegmental qualities such as length, tone, stress, and intonation. These are organized into a chart; the chart displayed here is the official chart as posted at the website of the IPA.
Letter forms
The International Phonetic Alphabet is based on the Latin script, and uses as few non-Latin letters as possible. The non-Latin letters are meant to harmonize with the Latin letters. For this reason, most letters are either Latin, Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed. A few letters, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, , were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter , , via the reversed apostrophe).
The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most letters would correspond to "international usage". Hence, the consonant letters have more or less their word-initial values in English ( as in gill, as in hill, etc.; though are typically aspirated in pill, till, kill while unaspirated in spill, still, skill); and the vowel letters correspond to the (long) sound values of Latin: as in machine, as in rule, etc. Of the remaining Latin letters found in the English alphabet , their sound values in the IPA differ from English, but align with their values in the Latin orthography or transliteration of other (often European) languages.
Beyond the letters themselves, there are secondary symbols which aid in transcription. Diacritic marks can be combined with the letters to add tone and phonetic detail such as secondary articulation. There are also special symbols for prosodic features such as stress and intonation.
Typography
The basic Latin inventory was extended by adding small-capital and cursive forms, overlapping diacritics such as hooks, and rotation. The sound values of these letters are related to those of the original letters or to those of letters that they were modified to resemble. For example, rotated letters were popular in the era of mechanical typesetting, as they had the advantage of not requiring the casting of special type for IPA symbols, much as the sorts for and , and , and , and and had traditionally often pulled double duty to reduce printers' costs. Thus, rotated recall , while rotated recall .
There are several letters from the Greek alphabet, though their sound values may differ from Greek. For most Greek letters used, subtly different glyph shapes have been intentionally devised for the IPA to better harmonize with the alphabet's Latin script; specifically , which are encoded in Unicode separately from their parent Greek letters . One, however – – has only its Greek form, while for and , both Greek and Latin forms are in common use.Compare: The notes at the Unicode IPA EXTENSIONS code chart , Michael Everson's blog here , John Wells' blog here , and here .
Iconicity The graphic derivation of letters and diacritics may be iconic: A rightward-facing hooked tail, as in , indicates retroflex articulation. The iconicity is strong enough that the IPA has stated that additional letters are implied. The tail originates from the hooked arm of an r. The top hook, as in , indicates implosion. Several nasal consonants are based on the form : . and derive from digraphs of gn and ng. Among consonant letters, the small capital letters , and also in extIPA, indicate more guttural sounds than their base letters is a late exception. Among vowel letters, the small capitals indicate what had originally been considered more lax articulations than their base letters; had originally been . Again, small-cap is a late exception. The tone letters are constructed iconically as notes on a musical stave.
Other representations
IPA letters have cursive forms designed for use in manuscripts and when taking field notes, but the Handbook recommended against their use, as cursive IPA is "harder for most people to decipher". A braille representation of the IPA for blind or visually impaired professionals and students has also been developed.
Modifying the IPA chart
The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the alphabet in the form of a chart. (See History of the IPA.) Not all aspects of the alphabet can be accommodated in a chart of the size published by the IPA. The alveolo-palatal and epiglottal consonants, for example, are not included in the consonant chart for reasons of space rather than of theory (two additional columns would be required, one between the retroflex and palatal columns and the other between the pharyngeal and glottal columns), and the lateral flap would require an additional row for that single consonant, so they are listed instead under the catchall block of "other symbols". The indefinitely large number of tone letters would make a full accounting impractical even on a larger page, and only a few examples are shown, and even the tone diacritics are not complete; the reversed tone letters are not illustrated at all.
The procedure for modifying the alphabet or the chart is to propose the change in the Journal of the IPA. (See, for example, December 2008 on an open central unrounded vowel and August 2011 on central approximants.) Reactions to the proposal may be published in the same or subsequent issues of the Journal (as in August 2009 on the open central vowel). A formal proposal is then put to the Council of the IPA – which is elected by the membership – for further discussion and a formal vote.
Many users of the alphabet, including the leadership of the Association itself, deviate from its standardized usage.See "Illustrations of the IPA" in the Handbook for individual languages (which for example may use as a phonemic symbol for what is phonetically realized as , or superscript variants of IPA letters that are not officially defined). The Journal of the IPA finds it acceptable to mix IPA and extIPA symbols in consonant charts in their articles. (For instance, including the extIPA letter , rather than , in an illustration of the IPA.)
Usage